4 months ago

4 months ago

4 months ago

4 months ago

Every year ESPN’s 24 Hours of Basketball feature is one of the highlights of the early-season schedule. This year’s version should be no different as ESPN has another loaded slate. Outside of the obvious appeal of both games of the Champions Classic the most interesting aspect of the schedule to us is that Wichita State is scheduled to play at home at midnight. It goes without saying that Koch Arena at midnight will be crazy and we understand the need for smaller programs to accept awful tip times to get on national television, but Final Four teams should not have to do that. Aside from that the thing that sticks out to us is that it seems like a waste to pair VCU–Virginia and Florida-Wisconsin against Michigan State–Kentucky and Duke–Kansas respectively since on any other night

The latest question in the CBS Candid Coaches series asked which coach was most likely to be the next Andy Enfield. Unlike the poll that we linked to in yesterday’s Morning Five, this votes in this poll were more evenly distributed with Bryce Drew (15%), Mike White (12%), Will Wade (9%), and Steve Masiello (8%) leading the way. The selection of Drew as the top choice is not particularly surprising and you could argue that he might already be too well-known to be considered an Andy Enfield-type. The others are certainly less well-known and unless you follow mid-major basketball pretty closely you might not know about them. Of course, a year ago Enfield’s name probably would not have even registered in the “others receiving multiple votes” category so it is quite possible that the next Andy Enfield is not even on this list.

Over the years AAU coaches have been accused of doing a lot of sketchy things, but we have not heard of any who were charged with drug trafficking. That is until Curtis Malone, head of the well-known DC Assault team, was charged with conspiracy to distribute heroin. After a year-long investigation, the DEA searched Malone’s home last Friday and uncovered a kilogram of cocaine, 100 grams of heroin, a handgun, and other related items. While we will acknowledge the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” it is worth pointing out that Malone was convicted of distributing crack cocaine in 1991 so this would not be a completely new endeavor if the charges were proven to be true.

If you had any question as to why Texas has its own ESPN network the news that Texasled the nation in merchandise royalties for the eighth straight year for schools represented by Collegiate Licensing Company should clear things up for you. Clearly the majority of these sales are driven by the football program, which has historically been much more successful than the basketball program, but it speaks to the popularity of the program particularly when its two biggest sports (football and basketball) are going through what can best be described as a rough patch. The fact that seven or eight of the schools are in the South (depending on what you consider North Carolina) should come as no surprise given the fervor of their fans. It is worth noting that several prominent programs–Ohio State, Michigan State, Southern California, and Oregon–are not represented by Collegiate Licensing Company so those schools might approach Texas in terms of royalties particularly since they might be under a different payment structure than schools represented by Collegiate Licensing Company.

For those of you who have short attention spans we suggest you check out Andy Glockner’s Twitter-style season preview where he goes through the most prominent teams in the 2013-14 season. As you would suspect the previews are not exactly comprehensive, but for the purposes of an early August preview this should suffice for pretty much everybody. And if you are in the mood for something a little bit more in depth, you can be sure that those previews are on the way.

Rush The Court is back with another edition of One on One: An Interview Series, which we will bring you periodically throughout the offseason. If you have any specific interview requests or want us to interview you, shoot us an email at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

After a 13-19 campaign in 2012-13, Chattanooga found itself in a coaching search. That search ended on May 13 when the Mocs named Will Wade as the program’s 18th head men’s basketball coach. While Wade is just 30 years old, he has an impressive résumé from working with several established, veteran head coaches. Wade’s coaching career began as a student manager at Clemson where he worked under both Larry Shyatt and Oliver Purnell. After graduating from Clemson in 2005, Wade stayed on with the Tigers for two more seasons – one as a graduate assistant and another as the director of operations. Following his time at Clemson, Wade moved on to Harvard where he served on Tommy Amaker’s staff for the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons. After his two seasons at Harvard, he then took a position on Shaka Smart’s staff at VCU where he helped coach the Rams to postseason appearances in each of his four seasons in Richmond. Among those four postseason appearances were three consecutive trips to NCAA Tournament and a Cinderella run to the 2011 Final Four. RTC correspondent Walker Carey recently had the pleasure of speaking to Will Wade about his career and his plans for his first head coaching job at Chattanooga.

Will Wade Takes Over Chattanooga as One of the Youngest Head Coaches in Division I Basketball

Rush the Court: You have been on the job at Chattanooga for a little over a month. What have you been able to accomplish during that time?

Will Wade: The time has gone very quickly, It has been a smooth transition. In the first month, we have hired a staff, recruited three new players and met a ton of boosters and donors. We have been very active in the community.

RTC:Other than your ties to Tennessee as a Nashville native, what attracted you to the job at Chattanooga?

WW: Tremendous growth opportunity. Chattanooga is a basketball town and we have been very good in the past – we can do it again. We have a great arena, a lot of local interest, our own practice facility, and an administration that wants to win. That is all of the ingredients needed for us to be successful.

We are not that familiar with the finances of the city of Chicago, but we have a hard time believing that it has a lot of money to spend on a new arena for DePaul. Still it appears that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is expected to announce his plans for an (at least partially) funded $300 million arena for the school that is part of a bigger project that the city is undertaking. There is still a lot of speculation on what this will involve including how much taxpayers will be expected to contribute and reports vary widely so we will hold off on commenting on the situation too much other than to say we have a hard time believing this will pass without a huge fight. The other interesting aspect of this proposal is the possibility that a casino could play a prominent role in the area. We doubt that being a NCAA Tournament site would be a major deal to a city the size of Chicago, but it could be an issue for whatever conference DePaul ends up in by the time the project is completed.

The ever-growing transfer list appears to have added one of its biggest names as it appears that Deuce Bellowill transfer from Baylor. Bello, who was a highly touted recruit coming out of high school thanks in large part due to his dunking ability, has never really blossomed as a college player averaging just 2.4 points and 1.4 rebounds per game last season as a sophomore. Given his production we wouldn’t expect him to be that highly recruited, but his athleticism and the fact that he has been “coached” by Scott Drew the last two seasons will probably lead several top programs to take a look at him.

You know a program has made it when other schools begin to raid its bench for head coaches. Such is the case for VCU (if you didn’t already know they had made) it as Chattanooga hired VCU assistant Will Wade to be its new head coach. We are always hesitant to give an assistant too much credit for their program’s success as Chattanooga is attempting to bill Wade as the driving force behind the success of both VCU (citing him as a driving force behind the “Havoc” defense) and Harvard (landing a top 25 recruiting class and helping mold Jeremy Lin into the player he is today–or make that last year actually). Outside of that we do not have much to add on Wade’s hiring (we will give it some time–a few years–before grading the hire), but will point out that it is kind of cute how the school starts off the press release by mentioning a public reception for Wade tomorrow that everybody is invited to attend.

We are not sure who got in Kyle Vinales ear today, but he or she certainly had a pretty quick impact as the Central Connecticut State transfer backed out of his commitment to transfer to Toledo hours after announcing it. Vinales is one of the top transfers available in terms of his scoring ability and should have the ability to score at almost any Division I level and certainly would have at the bottom of the MAC. The question is how far up he can go. The ability to put the ball in the basket is certainly a universal skill, but at some point the athleticism of the players you are playing against limits your ability to score. Vinales certainly has the ability to play at a higher level than Toledo, but in doing so he should be careful not to go to such a high level that his minutes decrease significantly as we have seen with several transfers.

We do not have much information about Brown sophomore Joseph Sharkey, who is in critical condition after being assaulted early on Sunday morning. According to reports, Sharkey was walking with a group of women when a man approached Sharkey and punched him in the face in what has been described as an unprovoked attack. To be frank at this point the details of the report and what led to the incident are not particularly important. Instead, we will focus on Sharkey and his health while wishing him the best in his recovery.

Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. Once a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are at the lower levels of the sport. If you have any suggestions as to areas we are missing or different things you would like to see, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Lead Story: Top-100 Nigel Williams-Goss Commits To Washington

Class of 2013 Point Guard Williams-Goss Is A Great Pick-up for Washington.

Huskies Off To A Good Start In Junior Class. Class of 2013 point guard Nigel Williams-Goss announced his commitment to Washington yesterday via Twitter and a player blog on National Recruiting Spotlight, giving the Huskies their first verbal in the junior class. Williams-Goss chose the Huskies over Harvard, Oklahoma, UNLV, and UCLA and held offers from a plethora of other schools including Missouri, Arizona and his hometown Oregon Ducks. The Findlay Prep point guard is a standout on the defensive end and has good stop-and-go quickness. He also has terrific range on his three-point shot and is a good passer with matching court vision. Williams-Goss already has plans to hit the recruiting trail for Washington and has named Class of 2013 standouts such as shooting guard Isaac Hamilton and power forwards Aaron Gordon and Marcus Lee as his targets. Head coach Lorenzo Romar is also chasing after shooting guard Jabari Bird and power forward Jordan Bell, among others. Gordon is a Washington lean and Bird is interested in the Huskies so if Romar can close out on those two, Washington looks to have a very good recruiting class in 2013 in the making. Washington fans will have plenty of opportunities to see Williams-Goss next year as his Findlay Prep team will likely play in multiple televised games on the ESPN family of networks.